Free The Pleasures of Summer by Evie Hunter

helped Eleanor pack up the targets. The security system was good, but nothing could replace a pair of watchful eyes and an alert brain.
    His phone rang. He checked the number and winced – it was his personal phone, the one only his family used. He answered anyway. ‘Hi, Mum. What’s up?’ he asked.
    ‘Flynn, you bad boy. Why haven’t you rung?’ His mother’s voice, thick with a Scottish burr, was the sound of home.
    ‘Come on, Mum, I rang last week.’
    ‘No, I haven’t heard a word from you for three whole weeks. And I doubt I would have heard then if the hospital hadn’t rung me. Were you planning to tell me you were injured?’
    No, he hadn’t planned to tell her a single word, andcursed the meddling hospital pen pusher who had taken it upon herself to ring his ICE numbers. Flynn resolved to put Niall Moore in as his In Case of Emergency contact in future.
    ‘Of course I would, Mum, but it was nothing, just a scratch.’
    There was a brief outraged silence on the other end. ‘You consider getting your ribs broken and spleen ruptured a scratch?’
    ‘When you say it that way, of course it sounds bad, but it was minor. A quick keyhole op and I’m good as new.’ Except for the pains that hit him when he twisted in certain directions and the fact that he was lifting half his usual weights in O’Sullivan’s well-equipped gym.
    Eleanor finished packing up. He waved goodbye to her and missed his mother’s next words. When he paid attention again, he heard, ‘Isn’t it great about David?’
    Flynn went on high alert. ‘What has he done now?’ he asked warily.
    Anything involving his half-brother was rarely great. David had a unique ability to get into trouble. When he was younger, it had been cars, gangs and the police. When he grew out of that phase, it had been women. Flynn still shuddered when he remembered David’s last terrible choice. It was one reason he had not been home in a long time.
    ‘He’s getting married. Isn’t it wonderful?’ There was no mistaking the joy in his mother’s voice.
    He clutched the phone tightly. ‘Who is he marrying?’ Surely David wouldn’t –
    ‘Lorna, of course.’
    Of course it was Lorna. Flynn closed his eyes for a second. Of all the women in Scotland, in the world, David had managed to pick the most unsuitable one. The one woman guaranteed to break his heart and tear the family apart.
    ‘They’re getting married?’ He tried to keep his feelings under control but his mother had no trouble hearing the lack of enthusiasm.
    ‘Now Flynn, I don’t know what you have against her. Give her a chance. Lorna is a lovely girl.’
    ‘I know.’ And he did. But how could he watch her marry his unsuspecting brother?
    Lorna, his former sub. The woman who had smashed his heart when she had walked away from him. He had always known that she would, that she needed a full-time Dom, someone who was there for her all the time, not a Ranger who was away for months at a time and who came home with injuries he couldn’t talk about. She had asked him to tear up her contract and he had. He hid his broken heart and wished her well.
    That had been hard enough. Watching her when she started to date David had been a special kind of torture, especially when he was certain that there was still a spark between them. Now he waited, wondering when David would find out that his angelic new girlfriend was a submissive with a need for what she called ‘Lovely ouchies’. And that Flynn was the man whose collar she used to wear.
    ‘When is the wedding?’ Please let it be a long engagement, one that would give David time to come to his senses.
    ‘The thirty-first of July, in the Canongate. You’re best man. Don’t think you can get out of it by saying you don’t have a tux, David said you can wear your kilt.’
    He murmured something incoherent before he hung up. Fuck, what a disaster. He had no idea what to do about this.
    With an effort, he dragged his attention away from his